The Endless Orchard: Phase Two

Access to healthy food

Exposure to air toxins

Self-sufficiency

Obesity

Resilient communities

Tree canopy cover

Walk/bike/transit score

Central LA

County of Los Angeles

City of Los Angeles

During a month long engagement at the new Los Angeles State Historic Park, we will host public fruit tree adoptions and planting days. We will provide fruit trees to Angeleno’s who want to collaborate on the project and who have an existing sunny space to plant in front of their property next to the sidewalk. New tree stewards agree to water and care for the trees. We will invite everyone to come help us plant the trees. All planted trees will be easily accessible from public spaces and they will be mapped on the Endless Orchard app and website. The Endless Orchard app and website, already

under construction, is a simple graphic user interface building upon already available Google Maps API as a platform anyone can use via a computer or smartphone.

The fruit tree donations and planting days are public events that create, strengthen and foster community. The Endless Orchard will invite neighbors to get out of their cars, walk their neighborhood, and meet fellow Angelenos! This project will encourage everyone to be friendly and say hi to people they don’t know while increasing access to healthy food. Fruit trees are beautiful; they clean the air, and add to the tree canopy.

The online component will illustrate how we are connecting bike paths, public transits and metro stops through neighborhoods, as the Endless Orchard becomes a new healthy way to navigate our city for years to come.

Benefits of The Endless orchard:

The project promotes community health, supports food security and combat high rates of nutrition-related diseases by creating a fun, beautiful and drought tolerant way for community members to take a walk, and by making free, nutritious, fresh fruit available to anyone who walks by. Studies suggest that contact with nature beneficially impacts blood pressure, heart rate, mood, day- to-day effectiveness, social behavior, cognitive functioning, and work performance. This project will stimulate the economy by helping to save tax dollars and increase local income. Let’s improve the environment by planting fruit trees with spongy root systems that will catch a significant amount of rainwater and that will remove both C02 and pollutants from the air. Fruit trees actually clean the soil - Hardwood trees remove toxins which do not end up in the fruit but are exfoliated through their leaves.The Endless Orchard Invites the community to participate in spearheading the transformation of Los Angeles into an innovative example of community

resources and public space. Shared stories about the diversity and richness of the community that can be experienced by walking the trail via the strong online component of the Endless Orchard where people can upload neighborhood and family histories to geo-tagged trees they have planted. In 50 years, the community will still be able to walk the Endless Orchard and the trees will still be bearing fruit.

Fallen Fruit planted the first fruit park in Los Angeles in Jan 2013 at Del Aire Park, the first public fruit park in CA. With the youth from HOLA, we successfully completed a pilot of The Endless Orchard in the neighborhood surrounding MacArthur park in 2014. Since then, the project has gained incredible momentum, strong partnerships, and a creative and administrative infrastructure. With this in place and with the support of the Goldhirsh Foundation, Fallen Fruit anticipates the completion of the next phase of the project before the end of Spring 2017.

This is our anticipated timeline for success: Winter/Spring 2017 (6 weeks) - Call for participation to expand The Endless Orchard in LA City by targeting existing at risk neighborhoods in food deserts and planting 200 Public Fruit Trees in collaboration with the public! Website + app completed by Feb 2016: Code Rodeo has been in partnership with Fallen Fruit to design and develop the Endless Orchard website (endlessorchard.com) and mobile app. The website + app will allow communities to map the public fruit trees and upload family and neighborhood histories to the geo-tagged trees. Build and reclaim the narrative of their community's history through their own words, photos and memories. With community participation, continue to plant fruit trees in the margins of public spaces, interstitial municipal spaces and in public rights-of-way at community orgs. Fine tune the app with public participation. Workshops on tree care.

Money

Volunteers

Staff

Publicity/awareness

Community outreach

Network/relationship support